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>The technology community must pick between enabling universal surveillance and censorship, or protecting the privacy of the vulnerable, including those who hol
by M_Grey 10y ago
>The technology community must pick between enabling universal surveillance and censorship, or protecting the privacy of the vulnerable, including those who hold minority opinions and express themselves in ways that could be deemed "unpleasant".
They chose a long time ago. A lot of the issues that are slowly coming to the surface for most people (police/surveillance state, endless war driven by military-industrial complex and politics, climate disaster, etc...) are old issues. They're finally surfacing because most of them are so far beyond criticality that they're actually detonating in our midst.
These choices have been made again and again by the few people who really bother to engage with these issues, and we lost. This is what losing all of these battles over decades looks like when the bill starts coming due.
- tomjen3 10y agoI don't believe it is a choice made once, but a series of choices. When Drupal threw out one of their leaders, because he was into BDSM, they made exactly the choice you suggest we don't. It was not made by some mysterious “other”, it was not made by “them”, it was a choice made by a few named people. It's a choice we all make every day, is the sum of those choices that make the world we live in. If you want to change the world we live in, act accordingly and convince others to act accordingly.
- M_Grey 10y agoMost people simply lack the ability to understand reality to any reasonable approximation, and are too easily led by pathos. For them, it's not what you say, but who you are. People like those on HN are a tiny minority, and that's the reality.